A black bumble bee, a duck and three ships

Here we go again, another two for one. I was going to post last night, but I felt like seven kinds of crap and ended up going to bed by 8:00 pm. Wycliffe seems to dislike me in the fact that, 1. I am once again sick and 2. I haven’t really had a good night’s sleep since getting here. I am so missing my dorm room back in Bemidji where my bed is comfy, I know how to work the thermostat and the walls are less paper thin. Needless say today I felt needed to apologize for any possible bad attitude due to being sick, tired and kinda cranky. Dave took the apology but said it probably won’t be necessary.

But enough about that, I need to catch you all up.

So, yesterday’s breakfast was sunny side up egg with English bacon, a bowl of applesauce and a glass of OJ. I didn’t have class until 10:15 or so, thanks to a heads up from Nigel Frith. I curled up for at nap… not that I really got one though. As it turns out we had an extra roommate the night before and he had stuck around. He was big, hairy and made me scream like a little girl. It was a black bumble bee. Picture this, I’m curled up in my blanket minding my own business and then there is the sound of a jumbo jet buzzing past my ear. Aimee jumped back and cowered until the covers think that if it couldn’t see me it wouldn’t sting me. Eventually I bolted from under the covers, jumped from my bed to Aimee’s then jumped almost on top of Aimee as we both ran for the door.

Twice we worked up the courage to try and find it so we could “swish it out the window.’ Personally I just wanted to kill it. I hate bees; was stung as a child and have been terrified since. We gathered up out things and headed down stairs to find some on to take care of our problem. The maintenance, Bill, took care of the bee. he didn’t kill it, but said it was out of the room. I did some research and found that the Oxfordshire has become a safe-haven for these little guys, who’s population has fallen 70% in the past 40 years. Thankfully, like other bumbles, their butts are too round so their stings don’t have as much bite to them… Bite or no bite it still hurts.

After that excitement I waited with my other classmates for the teacher to show up. it was around 10:40 when he finally got there. I got a 9 out of 10 on my last quiz and another smiley face with teeth. We started late and we ended late. Didn’t learn all that much in the class though.

Lunch yesterday was two crab cakes a bunch of green beans, some cracker rice cake thingies and double dessert. They still had the dessert from yesterday and they also had a brownie. Mostly, my lunch was dessert. Now about that duck. There was a male mallard duck that had been hanging out in the back yard of Wycliffe. It had curled up to take a nap while one of the girls was sitting at the picnic table. He stayed in the yard all though lunch and as people were finishing they were going out to feed him. One of the guys I was sitting by was determined to make that duck dinner. He went out to the duck with a fork tucked up against his fore-arm. I went out to see people feed the duck. He got so close I could have reached out and touched him. The duck did not become dinner, but I’m not sure where he went after he wondered off.

We had one more class that day and that was the field trip lecture with Dr. Chapman. He talked about three ships that we would be seeing today. After class I was so tired, I crashed up stairs. I didn’t set an alarm and almost slept right through dinner. After waking up I started feeling like crap. As I said before I went to bed around 8. A good six hours before I normally would. And as I also said before, I got no sleep.

That brings us up to date with today. I was up at 10pm, midnight,2am and then 7am. See, Wycliffe hates me. So woke up and the first words out of my mouth… “I feel like shit.” Pardon my french. Breakfast today was the same as yesterday, but my throat was so soar I couldn’t swallow. right after breakfast I walked to the chemist. They were closed. I ended up walking to Tesco and getting two 16 piece packs of Ibuprofen and three packs of Halls suck ’ems. Got back to the room, popped this pills like there was no tomorrow, but still thought about not going to Portsmouth with the class.

I went. Boy am I glad that I did. I got to the the Mary Rose in her final stages of restoration, the HMS Victory that Lord Horatio Nelson fought and die on in the battle of Trafalgar and the Ironclad war ship HMS Warrior. I’m still feeling pretty crappy, so I’ll come back and fill in more details at a later time. let me just say for now that the pictures will be worth the wait.

This one is going for a shower and then crashing in her bed. Tomorrow, here’s hoping, I’ll be off to my last trip to London to see Stomp, and maybe find the Dr. Who store and the Harry Potter store at Kings cross. Cross you fingers for me. I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired.